Improvisation and new learning are not private processes; they are shared with others at every age. We are called to join in a dance whose steps must be learned along the way, so it is important to attend and respond. Even in uncertainty, we are responsible for our steps.

Every loss recapitulates earlier losses, but every affirmation of identity echoes earlier moments of clarity.

... as we age we have not only to readdress earlier developmental crises but also somehow to find the way to three affirmations that may seem to conflict. ... We have to affirm our own life. We have to affirm our own death. And we have to affirm love, both given and received.

Learning to savor the vertigo of doing without answers or making do with fragmentary ones opens up the pleasures of recognizing and playing with patterns, finding coherence within complexity, sharing within multiplicity.

Worlds can be found by a child and an adult bending down and looking together under the grass stems or at the skittering crabs in a tidal pool.

Solutions to problems often depend upon how they're defined.

A suprising number of physicians manage to continue to care about persons even after the rigors of medical training.